In Crete with the Minotaur
by Jorge de Sena
I
Born in Portugal, of Portuguese parents
and a parent of Brazilians in Brazil,
perhaps I will become North-American when I get there.
I will collect nationalities just like shirts are put on,
used and thrown away, with all due respect
paid to the clothes one wears and did their job.
I am my own fatherland. The fatherland
I write about is the language that by generational chance
I was born in. And the language of what I do and of what I live is this
rage of mine for the scarce humanity in this world
when I'm not believing in another world, and I would only want another that
would be this very same.* But, if one day I forget about everything,
I hope I will grow old
having coffee in Crete
with the Minotaur,
under the surveillance of shameless gods.
II
The Minotaur will understand me.
He has horns as the sages and the enemies of life do.
He is half bull and half man, as all men are.
He raped and devoured virgins, as all beasts have.
Son of Pasiphaë, he was brother to a Racine's verse,
which Valéry, the cretin, thought to be one of the most beautiful in the langue.
Brother also of Ariadne, we was trapped in a ball of string that messed him up.
Theseus, the hero, and, as all heroic Greeks, a son of a bitch,
laughed at his respectable snout.
The Minotaur will understand me, will have coffee with me, while
the sun sets serenely on the sea, and the shadows,
filled with nymphs and unemployed ephebes,
will close down most sweetly in the cups,
like sugar that we stir with the dirty finger
of investigating life's origins.
III
It is there that I want to find myself again out of having let
life scattered in pieces throughout the world, as it was said
by that poor devil** who the Minotaur did not read, because,
as everyone, he doesn't speak Portuguese.
So do I don't speak Greek, according to reliable sources.
We will talk in Volapük, now
that none of us understands it. The Minotaur
didn’t speak Greek, wasn’t Greek, lived before Greece,
before all this learned shit that has been covering us for centuries,
crapped by our slaves, or by us when we are
the slaves of others. Having coffee,
we will tell each other of our sorrows.
IV
With fatherlands we are bought and sold, when there is lack
of fatherlands that are sold expensively enough so that there's shame
of not belonging to them. Nor I, nor the Minotaur,
will have any fatherland. Only coffee,
aromatic and quite strong, not of Arabia or of Brazil,
of Fedecam***, or of Angola or of nowhere. But coffee
nonetheless and that I, with filial tenderness,
will watch dripping from his chin of a bull
down to his knees of a man who doesn't know
from whom he inherited, if from his father, if from his mother,
the twisted horns that ornate
his noble forehead more ancient than Athens, and, who knows,
than Palestine, and other touristic locations,
all highly patriotic.
V
In Crete, with the Minotaur,
without verses and without life,
without fatherlands and without spirit,
without anything, without anyone,
save for the dirty finger,
I will have my coffee in peace.
_______
* Jorge de Sena's phrase is ambiguous in Portuguese, it means the opposite as well. I failed so far to find an equivalent in English.
** I'm like the Minotaur here. I haven't read the "poor devil" nor know who he is yet.
*** Federation of Chambers of Commerce. In Portuguese, fede means “it stinks”.
Translated by António Dinis Lopes.
It might be interesting to compare it with the translation of George Monteiro. 
